Ten years after launching Fisker Automotive, a company that once sparred with Tesla for California electric-vehicle supremacy, its founder is back with a new company as well as a new electric car, the all-wheel-drive EMotion. It won’t be officially introduced until next month at CES in Las Vegas, but it’s already priced for pre-orders at $129,900. In anticipation, we caught up with Henrik Fisker, designer and visionary, for a wide-ranging interview at the recent Los Angeles auto show and found that under Fisker 2.0—his new company’s official name is Fisker Inc.—the CEO is a bit apprehensive about big spending on traditional retail and manufacturing channels but all abustle with ideas of how he can innovate within the EV sector.
One of those innovations—to be featured in the EMotion, although perhaps not from its production start—is a way to charge the battery quickly without getting out of the car. As part of a future standard (and with hopes that other companies will get on board), the EMotion will be compatible with an in-ground coupler system that, after the car lines up to it, will come up from the ground and connect to the vehicle. An automatic-parking aid will help line up to it, according to Fisker, and the design of the coupler allows some position flexibility. “It also means you don’t have any interaction with the high voltage,” said Fisker, who added that his company will show a functional coupler at CES. “It’s very safe because it’s under the car.”
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“If you buy an electric car from a traditional car company, it’s a bit harder sell to make a clear brand statement, because they’re selling both.” – Henrik Fisker
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The inspiration for the coupler interface was the typically quick American gas-station stop, targeting nine minutes. Fisker says that in that time (with a 400-volt, 150-kW charging system) the EMotion could recover 127 miles of range.
The idea for an automated charging stop isn’t completely new. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in 2015, showed an “automated solid metal snake charger” (as shown below) that could connect a charger without any need to get out of the car. Tesla and others also have worked on battery-swapping alternatives but have been stymied by the labor-intensiveness of it and the lack of large-scale interest.
However the charging system works out, the EMotion itself is expected to offer a range of about 400 miles from its LG 21700-format lithium-ion cells, Fisker said. He admitted that there’s pressure to make the driving range high because there aren’t yet enough fast chargers and his firm doesn’t have the resources to develop the charging-infrastructure side. But he’s proud of the battery package. “We actually got cells from all the major makers and tested them in independent labs,” said Fisker. “We found that the LG cells we’re using had the best safety, performance, cost, and cycle life, and were best for us right now.”
Fisker marveled, though, that decisions about batteries and other EV components have been easier than when he first started on this path a decade ago, because a supply chain for electric-vehicle components actually exists. But he said he is proud of the liquid cooling system his own team has engineered for the pack, and he claimed that even in temperature extremes and in performance situations, the pack temperature can be kept within four degrees.
Cracking Solid State
In addition to developing an entire vehicle that Fisker won’t discuss in any depth yet, his team has been focused around another hot-button innovation area: solid-state battery technology. Fisker acknowledged that a lot of companies are currently working on bringing solid-state tech to market—but said he has an advantage in a team led by Fabio Albano, an alumnus of solid-state pioneer Sakti3. While Sakti3, which was sold to Dyson, was working on battery technology for medical devices—and some had called its claims of commercialization exaggerated—Fisker said his team has been working on the very different needs of developing it for cars and personal electronics.
“It’s mainly been dismissed for automotive because it’s very expensive to make, it doesn’t have the power, and it doesn’t work below zero,” said Fisker. “We have cracked all three of these areas.”
How? According to Fisker, Albano’s team has developed what he calls a bulk three-dimensional battery that bypasses the thin-film approach and its manufacturing hurdles and has 25 times more surface area (better for cooling) than a thin film. Fisker also said that it’s flexible, not brittle, so it can be fitted to existing lithium-ion battery enclosures. And perhaps best of all, he’s claiming that it has about 2.5 times the energy density, by volume, of today’s lithium-ion chemistries. In a vehicle like the EMotion, it could easily permit a 700-mile range, he said.
Henrik Fisker, working on the EMotion prototype in Los Angeles in October.
“This isn’t just a lab test; we’ve actually built the batteries,” Fisker quickly added, although he said that it’s probably still about five years from production in cars. The key is going to be to set up the supply chain and the manufacturing—something Fisker isn’t willing to undertake alone. “We’re not a battery company, so we’re talking to tech suppliers and the electronics sector,” he said, adding that his company is looking to license the technology for use outside the auto sector and noting that, because it takes longer to test a new technology for vehicles, it’s likely to hit the marker sooner in consumer electronics.
Fisker Inc. has nondisclosure patents on the technology and is not yet prepared to show it or how it’s made, Fisker said, but the company will demonstrate at CES how far along it is with a cellphone-sized pack that, he said, produces more than double the capacity of anything on the market now.
Fisker also said he expects the price of his company’s solid-state batteries to be about a third of the cost of current lithium-ion batteries. And he claimed that the company won’t even have to reach a particular volume to get to that cost. “It’s so simple to make, you don’t even have to be in the clean room to make this battery,” he said.
Focused on the Product and Brand
Back to the short-term plan: Fisker is aiming for first deliveries of the EMotion in 2019. It’s a potentially confusing time, as Chinese-owned Karma Automotive still builds and sells the Fisker Karma, which is now known as the Karma Revero.
But Fisker was clear in stating that his new firm won’t follow the path of the original Fisker Karma or the Revero, both of which pack a range-extender engine and a fuel tank. “Fisker Inc. will only ever do all electric, and the reason I think that’s important is that it’s another part of our competitive advantage, specifically against the established car companies.”
Fisker thinks that this will win over those who like being in the club of those committed to the environmental benefits of going electric. “If you buy an electric car from a traditional car company, it’s a bit harder sell to make a clear brand statement, because they’re selling both,” he argued. “If you were to become vegan tomorrow, you probably wouldn’t go to McDonald’s to buy a salad. Somehow the brand isn’t about salads.”
While Fisker’s idea about the kind of car he wants to build has become focused, the landscape of mobility has broadened tremendously. Mobility is in the process of being redefined, and for that reason Fisker hopes to future-proof his vehicle by building in five lidar units. Fisker said he sees future mobility as more of a menu of options than it is today, with tremendous opportunity in premium ride hailing, where there’s a consistent, upscale experience.
Rendering of the Fisker Orbit shuttle vehicle, a project in partnership with Hakim Unique Group.
Specifically to that end, the company also recently revealed sketches of a podlike autonomous electric shuttle van, the Fisker Orbit, and announced a plan to “develop the world’s most appealing autonomous shuttle for smart cities across the globe” in conjunction with China’s Hakim Unique Group. The partners say deliveries will start in October 2018.
Fisker would not give away anything about his plan to manufacture or sell the EMotion or say whether it will have any connection to China, but he insisted that his company has a plan worked out. “We’re trying to redefine the business model for automotive,” he said. “The auto industry is the biggest in terms of revenue but has the smallest profit margins, so we would like to change, to rethink not just the retail side but the manufacturing side, and we’re hoping to do something very innovative . . . a disruption in those two segments.”
This past summer, Fisker revealed the service side of his vision by announcing a partnership with the EV Hybrid Shop, a chain of 34 service centers specializing in hybrids and electrics. And he’s still working out whether a more affordable model—not based on the EMotion—will be part of the automaker’s initial push.
Those are a lot of pieces yet to fall into place. After CES, we’ll have a much better idea of how it all takes form.
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